Fun Fact: it's been a whopping 589 days since the last major site update. But after over a week of downtime HaloCustoms is back with a fresh lick of paint and an array of QOL updates, just in time for E3 2018!

This ongoing upgrade (which is about 80% complete) is a complete and total overhaul of the site. My goal here is try and incorporate all the things that have made HC great over the years like a greatest hits album of sorts.

So let's break down some of the changes;

Media Stream​

As well as being the home page; rather than just being a place new articles go to disappear into relative obscurity, the Media Stream is now a fully featured blog with all 522 posts categorised lovingly by hand. The option to filter media stream posts by author will also be available soon. Categories and Authors also get their own featured slider for their respective...

Not much as been going on within the Halo Universe Recently. A new leader for Halo Wars, Yapyap the Destroyer came out to play with all his grunty mates to smash some UNSC butts into the ground and explode all over them with firey methane. Other than that, we're still awaiting the Awaking the Nightmare expansion but until then, we're in a little bit of a content drought as we eagerly await the announcement of the next main Halo game.

A new tuning update for Halo 5 has been in the works for a while and 343i have finally gotten around to giving it to us players to, well, play with and give them our feedback. The tuning rollout will be in four phases, starting week of September 4th.

The first update will bring in all the map balance changes to the Team Arena playlist 343 outlined in their article, ready for the weapon tuning update.

Yeah, Game of Thrones is back on TV, people are dying a lot and participating in other kinds of debauchery, but that's not what we're here for, right?

Dropping feet first into hell this week, we have Operation Spearbreaker in Halo Wars 2. A short two mission campaign focused on Boomerang Company, an elite company of ODSTs dropping into the heart of enemy territory focusing on a new Banished plot featuring a certain angry Lekgolo, only a small part of the overall story of the Halo Wars 2 games as Atriox and his Banished Covenant army fight for control over the Ark against Captain Cutter and the crew of the UNSC Spirit of Fire. At the very tip of the Spear stands a Squad of ODSTs lead by Major Vaughan, leader of Sunray...

FORE!!! The results for our Par for the Course Battle Golf Forge Contest we re-announced back in May are in! While submissions for this contest were relatively low, judging went on as planned and our results are finalized. Prizes will go out as planned, however please note our source for the prizes, Ske7ch over at 343 Industries, has gone on vacation recently and prizes will not be sent out until he returns. Now, let us bring your attention onto the winners!

It's hot out, so it must be summer. Unless you're in the southern hemisphere, where it's winter. But for us civilised northerners, it's summer so you'll have to deal with it. --insert gif here--

Because it's summer, 343i are having a Summer Celebration of all things Halo with lots of juicy little tidbits to keep us all inside where the AC is on cold to save us from the death ray that we call the sun.

First up, Halo 5: Guardians is getting an upgrade to work in 4k with the Xbox One X. It was basically guaranteed that Microsoft would want one of their flagship titles working in 4k on their latest version of the Xbox One, and now wer've got it in writing. We'll be smashing shoulder first into the 4k generation in a couple of months, it'll certainly be worth it to play through the campaign again once the...

Yeah yeah, blah blah where are the updates? Well Halo news ground to a standstill and nothing big was announced at E3, so this segment is going to become fortnightly (bi-weekly) while the news is slow. Hopefully we'll see something new and shiny soon, it's been a while!

The one big thing that was announced was Halo Wars 2: Awakening the Nightmare. A new, flood-themed expansion for Halo Wars 2. Featuring a brand new series of campaign missions played from the perspective of the Banished as they take on a terrifying and ancient enemy: The Flood. Yep, the tentacle monsters are back and more squishy and tentacle-y than ever.

We'll also be seeing Terminus Firefight, a new co-op game mode that allows up to three players to play against increasingly difficult...

In case you don't know me, hi! My name is Alex, and I am one of HaloCustoms' new content contributors / moderators. I previously worked on ForgeHub's content contribution team, and I led a group of five other staff members to create a series of content for users across both the website, and the growing YouTube channel. I enjoy indie games, Halo, cats, and long walks on the beach. A few of you have chatted with me already, but if you haven't, feel free to sent me a message saying hi!

Now, onto questions! (btw I'm answering every single one so everyone gets the cool badge)

deathwish9x asks:
- What is your name?

- What is your quest?

- What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

1, 2, 3. I still need to watch Monty Python.

Sky asks:
1. Would you risk it for a chocolate biscuit?
2.Which staff member with a symbol in their name is your...

If you're a long-time fan, you probably know a good deal about the history of the franchise. From its basement-dwelling origins, to the peak of its popularity, Halo's history is one chock-full of twists and turns.

Today, Vice's aptly named Waypoint released a retrospective article covering everything from Halo's origins to present. straight from the mouths of some of its creators. Most of the meat here has been shared publicly in the past, but never before has such a comprehensive compilation of historical Halo tidbits been published. In other words, even hardcore fans are bound to learn something they didn't already know.

Greetings, HaloCustoms. There has been a serious lack of custom game events around here lately and we're pretty bummed out about it. What sort of a Halo forum are we if we don't host official custom lobbies every now and then, right? Well, that just so happens to be why I'm here today! Some of you might have witnessed a peculiar tweet in which the mystery-man behind our Twitter noticed an ominous scent coming from the distance. As it turns out, their senses were spot on because we're announcing the fourth installation of our HaloCustoms vs the World event!

If you aren't aware, HaloCustoms vs the World is a weekend-long event in which the staff and our wonderful community join forces to dominate the forces of evil in Halo 5's (and maybe even MCC's) Matchmaking. Much of the event will take place in the BTB playlist...

The Galaxy's biggest badass is back, in minature form! That's right, Sergeant Major Avery Junior Johnson is getting in on the RTS fun in Halo Wars 2, joining the ranks in firefight as a playable leader in the multiplayer game modes. This certified bad ass is bringing a whole load of firepower with him too, ready to stomp some Covenant ass back into the 25th century.

You like big guns and stomping your enemies underfoot in towering mechs? So does Johnson. Playing as him in Halo Wars 2 allows you to field some mean machines, not least of them the Mantis. Until now only seen in the FPS games of the Halo universe, this one mech stomping machine is only available to Johnson, replacing the Warthog in a very similar combat roll. Armed with a chaingun and missile pods, the Mantis is best suited against infantry and ground vehicles. A Veteran...

Not much happenend in the Halo world this week, all the news has been taken up by a certain Marmite flavoured game made by Halo's original creators.

If you haven't heard of it, Project Contingency is a fan-made Halo game that uses the Unreal 4 engine. It is being developed by a team of Halo fans with one overall goal in mind: To deliver the best Halo experience on PC that stays true to the series that we all live. Everything for this game is being developed from scratch and all of the team are working for zero profit, as they plan to release the game for free when it's done. For now, they're aiming for a multiplayer-only experience, but they would like to branch out into other areas if possible. They recently released their April update for the game, showcasing some of the pre-alpha gameplay and I must say it looks stunning for a fan made...

Staff Q&A is back! Kinda. We axed this series in 2015 because we wanted to focus our attention on the community. However, with the recent addition to our orange ranks being somewhat of a mystery-man around here, we thought it would be appropriate to let the community interrogate him a little. With that having been said, welcome to another installment of staff Q&A! You will be questioning our newest moderator, AlexVan123! There is a limit of three questions per member and the srs bzns trophy will be awarded to the cool members that ask cool questions. Let the questioning begin!

I've been ill with some kind of cough/throat infection so it's going to be a short one this week.

Something different to start us off this week, some background music while you read. A cover of Breaking Benjamin's Blow Me Away track from the Halo 2 OST, sung by the extremely talented Frankie Day:

Time for some meat to go with those vocal potatoes. It's a sad day for the Halo community as Dan Ayoub, 343 industries Studio Head for Strategy has left to go and work with Microsoft's Mixed Reality team. Dan has been working on Halo for the best part of 8 years starting on 2009's Halo: Reach and has helped 343i work with some amazing studios and partners from around the world. Worry not, as the next Halo Wars 2 DLC is safe in the hands of Dan's former team at 343i and there are some wonderful...

FORE! Grab your golf clubs, put on your tweed jacket and suade shoes with those little spikes on the bottom. It's off to the golf course for another round of the HaloCustoms weekly roundup.

The first hole of the front 9 is a Par 4 with a water hazard and cunningly placed man cannons that if you're not careful can set you back a couple of strokes. That's right, all the golfing jargon means the HaloCustoms Par for the Course Battle Golf Forging contest is back. This time it's better than ever, thanks to our wonderful admin Psychoduck. He's been in touch with the guys over at 343 Industries and managed to wrangle us up some decent prizes!

This event was announced a while back but put on hold due to some issues with the contest but those have now been resolved and we're ready to have another swing at it. There were some cool maps submitted to the previous iteration of the competition...

It's time to dust off your irons and grab a caddy; Par for the Course is back!

Today, it is our pleasure to announce that we have partnered with the fine folks at 343 Industries to bring this event back into the fold. Our new partner was focused on the Ghost in the Shell Forge Contest until recently, but we hope you'll agree that the delay was well-worth it. Read up below for new details on prizes deadlines, and more!

In addition to the prizes listed below, we will of course be spotlighting the winners and runner-ups and also putting them through their paces in some community playdates, so don't feel bad if you hit a bogey!

If you were a new user after the implementation of Xbox Live login you do not have a password. Still, follow this link to set a password to your account. An email will be dispatched to the email address used for your Microsoft account.

Put your feet up, crack open your favourite beverage and some of your favourite snacks and come have a gander at our weekly update.

First up, the lovable Tom French has been made the Lead Multiplayer Design Director at 343i. Tom has been one of the driving forces behind some of the amazing Forge updates that we've been seeing over the past months, giving forgers tools and objects to make all the awe-inspiring maps that we've been seeing. As his new job states he'll be responsible for designing the gameplay for Halo 5's Multiplayer, and one can assume he'll also be in that role for any future games developed by 343i (Halo 6 anyone?). Considering the things Tom has done for forge, I'm sure we can expect great things from him. Be sure to give him a warm welcome and send him all your constructive feedback, he's been quite open with us on twitter in the past, let's not ruin that by spamming him with...

SOUND THE ALARMS!
The Big Team Battle playlist in Halo 5: Guardians received a big update today! This update adds five new community-created forge maps to the playlist, adds the Assault gametype (finally!), revamps one existing map, and game modes have been tweaked. To celebrate, Squally DaBeanz put together a BTB update trailer for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Issues with signing in on HaloCustoms with custom gamerpics on Xbox Live have been resolved!

If any users encounter issues signing in or registering on HaloCustoms, we ask you to use the Contact Us form and submit a ticket to let us know that you're having issues.

As most of you surely know, we use Xbox Live accounts to seamlessly sign into HaloCustoms. While we are very happy with this system, it does lead to the occasional issue of a third-party change being made which negatively affects users' ability to log in on our website. One such change, the addition of the custom gamerpic feature on Xbox, is currently causing such an issue.

Users who have created a custom gamerpic appear to unable to sign into HaloCustoms at the moment. If you'd like to sign in, please avoid the use of this feature for the time being. If you already have a custom gamerpic but are still signed in to this site, you should be safe provided...

Welcome back for another weekly™ installment of your favourite news roundup, it's the HaloCustoms weekly roundup!

HCS North America: Summer Pro League dates have been announced, starting at HCS Daytona on the 12th of March and finishing up at DreamHack Atlanta on the 21st of July. During that time, there will be seven matches between each of the teams where they will get the chance to play against each other in the hopes of becoming champion.

Fresh from their HCS World Championship win in March, Optic Gaming will be looking to continue their winning streak; and of course they'll be the ones to watch, but they'll have a big target on their backs. Runners up from HCS Worlds, Team EnVyUs will be looking to get revenge from the finals and that golden opportunity they missed to knock down that green wall.

The top six will go on to the finals at DreamHack Atlanta with 7th and...